Online preconcentration and determination of chondroitin sulfate, dermatan sulfate and hyaluronic acid in biological and cosmetic samples using capillary electrophoresis.

Capillary electrophoresis with large-volume sample stacking using an electroosmotic flow pump was developed for the determination of chondroitin sulfate, dermatan sulfate, and hyaluronic acid. Central composite design was used to simultaneously optimize the parameters for capillary electrophoresis separation. The optimized capillary electrophoresis conditions were 200 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate, 200 mM butylamine, and 0.5% w/v polyethylene glycol as a background electrolyte, pH 4 and -16 kV. Exploiting large-volume sample stacking using an electroosmotic flow pump, the sensitivity of the proposed capillary electrophoresis system coupled with UV detection was significantly improved with limits of detection of 3, 5, 1 mg/L for chondroitin sulfate, dermatan sulfate, and hyaluronic acid, respectively. The developed method was applied to the determination of chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid in cell culture media, cerebrospinal fluid, cosmetic products, and supplementary samples with highly acceptable accuracy and precision. Therefore, the proposed capillary electrophoresis approach was found to be simple, rapid, and reliable for the determination of chondroitin sulfate, dermatan sulfate, and hyaluronic acid in cell culture media, cerebrospinal fluid, cosmetic, and supplementary samples without sample pretreatment.

Identification of Volatile Compounds and Selection of Discriminant Markers for Elephant Dung Coffee Using Static Headspace Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry and Chemometrics.

Elephant dung coffee (Black Ivory Coffee) is a unique Thai coffee produced from Arabica coffee cherries consumed by Asian elephants and collected from their feces. In this work, elephant dung coffee and controls were analyzed using static headspace gas chromatography hyphenated with mass spectrometry (SHS GC-MS), and chemometric approaches were applied for multivariate analysis and the selection of marker compounds that are characteristic of the coffee. Seventy-eight volatile compounds belonging to 13 chemical classes were tentatively identified, including six alcohols, five aldehydes, one carboxylic acid, three esters, 17 furans, one furanone, 13 ketones, two oxazoles, four phenolic compounds, 14 pyrazines, one pyridine, eight pyrroles and three sulfur-containing compounds. Moreover, four potential discriminant markers of elephant dung coffee, including 3-methyl-1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 2-furfurylfuran and 3-penten-2-one were established. The proposed method may be useful for elephant dung coffee authentication and quality control.

Droplet-based glucosamine sensor using gold nanoparticles and polyaniline-modified electrode.

A droplet-based electrochemical sensor for direct measurement of D-glucosamine was developed using carbon paste electrodes (CPEs) modified with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and polyaniline (PANI). Central composition design (CCD) was employed as a powerful method for optimization of parameters for electrode fabrication. The optimized amounts of AuNPs and PANI obtained from the response surface were determined as 300 and 3000mgL(-1), respectively. Coupled with a droplet microfluidic system, the analysis of glucosamine was performed in a high-throughput manner with a sample throughput of at least 60 samples h(-1). In addition, the adsorption of the analyte on the electrode surface was prevented due to compartmentalization in droplets. Linearity of the proposed system was found to be in the range of 0.5-5mM with a sensitivity of 7.42×10(-3)Amol(-1)Lcm(-2) and limits of detection and quantitation of 0.45 and 1.45mM, respectively. High intraday and interday (evaluated among 3 days) precisions for the detection of 50 droplets containing glucosamine were obtained with relative standard deviation less than 3%. The system was successfully used to determine the amounts of glucosamine in supplementary products with error percentage and relative standard deviation less than 3%. In addition, the amounts of glucosamine measured using the developed sensor were in good agreement with those obtained from a CE method. These indicate high accuracy and precision of the proposed system.

Characteristic fingerprint based on gingerol derivative analysis for discrimination of ginger (Zingiber officinale) according to geographical origin using HPLC-DAD combined with chemometrics.

Chromatographic fingerprints of gingers from five different ginger-producing countries (China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam) were newly established to discriminate the origin of ginger. The pungent bioactive principles of ginger, gingerols and six other gingerol-related compounds were determined and identified. Their variations in HPLC profiles create the characteristic pattern of each origin by employing similarity analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). As results, the ginger profiles tended to be grouped and separated on the basis of the geographical closeness of the countries of origin. An effective mathematical model with high predictive ability was obtained and chemical markers for each origin were also identified as the characteristic active compounds to differentiate the ginger origin. The proposed method is useful for quality control of ginger in case of origin labelling and to assess food authenticity issues.